SOME of us may be still scrambling to find that perfect Christmas gift for the ones we love, but Timothy Sherlock could do no better than the one he’s already given to many.
It’s the priceless gift of helping others find their voice … or more precisely, their singing voice.
As part of his role as an accomplished composer, music conductor and choir master with the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC), Tim leads a choir once a week at the Queensland Children’s Hospital, at South Brisbane.
That choir’s a mixed bag of people from all parts of the hospital – doctors, nurses, various health workers, other staff members, volunteers.
Some of the doctors and others who’ve joined the choir over the past five years have come hesitantly, claiming “But I can’t sing …”
Tim will have nothing of that.
“I really believe that (everyone can sing),” he said.
“Yes, definitely, because it’s like anything – you have to learn some skills and train.
“Any sport requires skill-building, and the voice is exactly the same. And that’s my job … (to help that happen).
“At the choir we’ll start with vocal warm-ups where they learn how to connect the breath with the vocal mechanism.
“… Not everyone can do it straight away but it takes practice and it can happen.
“And I see that confidence building with people’s voices.
“Today, they do not sound like they did five years ago; it’s a big progression.
“And I’m really proud of that, because it’s a gift that I can give as a human being to another person.”
Tim’s helped others discover that gift at Australian Catholic University’s Banyo campus where he leads a choir, and at primary and secondary schools around Queensland, including Catholic schools.
Helping people find their singing voice is not the only gift Tim’s training brings.
There’s so much more to it.
“I’m glad that my work is music-making, because it’s soul-enriching, it’s life-giving,” he said.
Music’s about the search for beauty in the art forms.
“For me, (it’s also about) the fact that you can search to create something beautiful as a composer or as a performer,” Tim said.
“… Having a knowledge of music gives you another language in which to experience the world …
“… Like if I spoke Hungarian or Finnish, I could listen to someone speaking and I would understand what they were talking about, and music is the same.
“When you’re trained in music, you’re not just hearing the sounds, you’re hearing what’s happening – (for instance) we can be in a major key here, and then we modulate to a minor key, and then … ‘What’s she doing now as a composer?’ ‘She’s changing meter …’, so that the rhythm’s changed.
“That’s a language.
“So, for me, that’s a really powerful thing in my life – to have that ability to speak that language.
“In terms of the soul (element), I think communal music-making is where that really comes into its own, and I see that in my work here at (ACU) but also in the hospital choir.
“It’s bringing people together for that moment in their week …
“There’s research that (talks about) … the effect on blood pressure, the effect on oxygen saturation in the blood, the mood-enhancing and counteracting depression – that’s what communal music-making does, and particularly singing.
“There’s a kind of almost the same effect as yoga or meditation on the body when you’re breathing as a group of people together.
“So that’s physiological but I think it’s also soul, it’s also that communal music-making – that’s what lifts people.”
Tim recalls a recent response involving a paediatric surgeon at the hospital that meant a lot to him.
“After one concert, his wife came up to me and said, ‘I just wanted to say thank you for doing this with us, with the hospital community, because in rehearsal it’s the only hour-and-a-half of his week where he’s not thinking about work, or sick children, or that pressure …’,” he said.
“Because that’s the other thing – you can’t be singing in a choir and thinking about something else.
“… If you’re there, your brain just can’t do it – you’ve got to be focused on the musical activity, on the language that’s being discussed or performed.
“You can’t be thinking about something else; you have to absent yourself to do that.
“That was a really powerful thing for me – to hear that feedback …”
The choir itself brings other gifts to the hospital community.
“We sing at the remembrance service every year for the hospital, for the families of children who’ve passed during that year, and COVID meant that we had to do online recordings which have been really beautiful,” Tim said.
“They’re pre-recorded and then they’re shown at the services, but the impact of that also is quite profound – to have the hospital community come together and sing in remembrance of children.
“It’s powerful.
“We had a member of the staff at the hospital she passed away recently, suddenly in an accident, and the choir were asked to contribute a piece to her funeral.
“We couldn’t be there physically but they showed one of the recordings that we’d done for a remembrance service, and we just received some feedback from her husband to say how powerful it was.
“She was actually a member of the choir at some point …
“But that’s another example of the gift that music can be.”
QPAC and the Queensland Conservatorium, both located in South Bank near the Queensland Children’s Hospital, asked Tim to form the choir as a service to the hospital.
“… It was kind of a healing thing to bring people together (after an amalgamation of hospitals),” he said.
The aim was to help build morale.
“It grew from 13 singers in the first rehearsal,” Tim said.
“I was like, ‘My goodness, this is really challenging – (with) people who’ve never sung before …’
“And it’s really personal when you have to show what your voice is like.
“It takes a lot of trust – to trust other people with that.
“And it grew from that little group of people, some of them who are still in the choir these five years later, to (the point where) we’ve had to cap numbers because of COVID …
“There’s limits to numbers of people in spaces and things …
“So we have around about 50 at the moment but pre-COVID it was up to 65.”
The choir extends to the community to “people who come to that hub in their lives at some point”.
“I’ve actually got high school students in it as well whose parents are associated with the hospital,” Tim said.
“But it’s not for the children.
“Mind you, we rehearse on the second-level foyer out in the open space, and you can hear the choir singing on a Tuesday night, everywhere in the hospital.
“And we often get people bringing children down in their wheelchairs or just to sit there and listen for a while.
“It’s really nice …”
Tim knows how fortunate he is to be able to contribute so positively to lives of others while indulging his own passion for music.
“And I have to say, I don’t say that I am the best at anything. I am not,” he said.
“It’s just that I love it so much that it’s … I’m learning every day.
“As a teacher for 25 years you learn from your students.
“I know it’s a cliche – it’s in The King and I, in Getting to Know You – that your students will teach you.
“And that is true.
“So I just want to say that I feel privileged that I have that opportunity to contribute that to someone’s life …
“There’s a lot of pressure in health care … you’re dealing with people’s lives …
“And they do report back (about singing in the choir) and say, ‘I felt terrible today but when I’m in rehearsal, I feel elated …’
“They go home feeling a lot better; it’s a really powerful thing.
“I see that here (at ACU) as well.”
For Tim, it all started when he was “a little boy soprano”, 10 years old and in a choir at Nudgee Junior (now Ambrose Treacy College, Indooroopilly), singing Lift Up Your Hearts to the Lord with the St Louis Jesuits who were visiting Brisbane.
He remembers he had an enthusiastic teacher then who helped him come alive to the gift of music.
His own enthusiasm intensified at St Joseph’s, Gregory Terrace, and it wasn’t long before he wanted to build his working life around music.
“After I finished my degree, I went and worked with the Public Trustee of Queensland, in a legal area, and I’d worked there for about three years and realised that I missed music,” he said.
“So that’s when I went and did a Diploma of Education in Music Teaching …
“I remember thinking, ‘I want to be surrounded by music in my work. I don’t want to be doing something else and then a little bit of music on the side …’
“That was a big move for me, and I have never regretted it.”
